Closer Look: Interior

Ok, it's time to talk about the inside of SilverStone's GD06. Before I start, let me just say that this is an HTPC case. A form-factor case. A small case. For some reason, the rules with these things are different. I don't know if they require more engineering, or cost more to make, or design, or what...but for the same price, you get less physical material, fewer "real" features for the same price as other cases. Maybe someone can fill me in on the reason.

To get the lid off you have to remove three, yes three screws. Let me say now that nothing in this case is tool-less. In fact, you can't even use one screwdriver for the entire build. UGH!! So take the cover off and you get the interior pictured above. On the left is the ODD tray and the motherboard area, and on the right is the hot-swap bays (top) and ... uh ...miscellaneous area. Under the miscellaneous area sits the PSU's home.

In order to perform a full install you basically have to remove everything in the case save the fans. The hot-swap assembly must come off. Before taking it off you need to open both hot-swap drive doors. With them open you can see inside that there are no alignment rails, no screw holes, just the SATA ports at the back. You can see that the SATA ports have a data cables and four power wires coming out from each connector. We'll show these later. With the doors open you remove four screws that keep the assembly attached to the frame. These screws are different sizes, so you need to keep track.

Remove the ODD tray (4 more screws) to get nearly full access to the case. With everything removed we can take a closer look at the fans. Above is a shot of the left fan. All the fans come with decent lengths of power cable and filters similar to the one on the PSU intake. You can also see the PSU mounting area butts up against the left fan. Don't worry, it'll accept the standard length ATX power supply.

The right side fans are exactly the same as the one on the left, but they consume the entire side of the case. With three fans included by default it would have been nice if SilverStone could have included an adapter to have them all connected. A small thing that makes things more convenient.

If you want the entire case to be open then you'll need to remove the cross-bar that braces the front and back panels. That takes another two screws. So that's 10 screws for a comfortable build, and make sure to keep track of where they go. The GD06 has four expansion slots to fit a micro-ATX case plus one additional slot oriented horizontally above the PSU. Like the PSU, any card in this slot is limited to 5.9". This space I called the miscellaneous space since it can house a PCI bracket/card, a hard drive, or both. The next section will discuss how.

Next we'll get slightly more intimate with the inside of the GD06 including a simple build.

Comments

not a bad case, but a few things wrong with it. The 2 front hotswap bays don't operate easily. Had a problem with a Joel @ silverstone as both my hotswap bays were defective. He asked that I send him a copy of my invoice as well as the s/n from the case. That was done last October. After numerous emails to him, he said that they sent out 2 different parcels via post to my house. I never received any of them, making me suspect that he sent anything at all. I've received post mail from Hong Kong with better results, so they've lost my business. Won't be buying anything with the Silverstone name on it in the furure!

I recently built a HTPC using this case and Silverstone's recommended PSU for this case. Only problem was, I couldn't fit the PSU with the fan facing down because the hot swappable bays prevented it. I had to flip the PSU upside down but now the fan blows up instead of down creating heat within the case. Emailed Silverstone and no response. I'm curious as to the PSU that was used by the author as I thought a modular PSU would be the way to go. Not so.

Besides all that, the case is very quiet and love the hot swappable bays. Plus, I like the clean look of the front. It has a very high WAF.

I installed a Rosewill RD400-2SB. It's flipped so the intake fan pulls air in from the bottom of the case and spits it out the back. The PSU enclosure is sealed well enough that the air flow doesn't mix with the case.

I bought this case for my current HTPC build. For the price I consider it a ok buy. Couple of things that detracted from the case:

1. If you buy the modular 500w Strider PC that Silverstone sells you HAVE to mount the PSU fan up. Checking at the install pics the reviewer was able to put his PSU fan down where there is a vent. With the modular Strider the location of the power cables made that impossible.

2. Screws. Little screws. No thumbscrews for case. Just screws. Totally agree with reviewer on this.

3. Mount for hard drive/SSD is lame. I ended up sticking my main drive into one of the two hot-swap bays.

4. I actually did not install a DVD drive as I rarely use one and have a stand-alone Blu-Ray player on my entertainment center. This allows you to install up to 120mm height cooler. Not enough for a Hyper212+ or the other tower-style heatsinks, but a Gemini 2 fits fine. I have an external DVD drive if I ever need to use one.

I see a lot of HTPC builds at overclock.net. Many of them use full sized HD6950 or 6970 cards. It's amazing what you can squeeze into some of these things. I've even seen tiny little cases with an H50 or H60 installed along with a video card.

I always find it funny when I see a case that uses the same cheap $2.59 filters I used on some of my 120mm fans in my current builds. I only used those filters because there was nothing else handy, I wonder what SilverStone's excuse is?

This case is a no-go. Too many problems. In addition to what reviewer and other commenter said, my take:

1) No place to put a card reader. Surely, a card reader is essential for HTPC. 2) The front door is unnecessary and a liability. Better to have easy access like AV receivers. A big problem is door blocks the USB ports, where one port will most likely be used to plug in a wireless keyboard/mouse transceiver. Such a transceiver must face the front in order to have adequate range. So why have a door block it?3) Why a need to have hot-swap trays for HD? Who asked for such a thing in a HTPC? It is better to have 2 5" openings for 2 optical drives. 4) One must be able to install a standard size PS of any design.